Family Reunion Extended Version
by Lucillia
Summary: When Naruto left the village for the first time on the mission to guard the bridge builder Tazuna, he ended up finding something unexpected across the battlefield...a living relative.
1. Finding Family

Uzumaki Naruto glared up at the Missing-Nin who had just stomped on his headband. That had been a gift from Iruka! There was no way in hell he was going to let some bastard trample it underfoot. With little to no regard for his safety, he raced towards the headband which had been one of the few non-edible gifts he'd received in his entire life, the symbol of his status as a Ninja of Konoha.

"Uzumaki Naruto, you get back here!" Sakura screamed. Recently, she'd taken to yelling at him as if he were a misbehaving toddler, thanks to a D-rank where he'd wandered out of sight for a couple of minutes. It really annoyed him. While the concern he'd heard in her voice was somewhat heartwarming, it was annoying nonetheless.

&!&!&

"Uzumaki?" both Zabuza and his water clone said in surprise before peering more closely at the boy who had snatched his headband from beneath his unresisting foot before he was almost immediately thrown on the ground once more.

"Not Uzumaki Sato's son?" he asked, further studying the reckless child that was now standing and retying his headband while making some pointless speech about becoming Hokage someday.

Looking at the boy, he could see that he had a round face that would almost assuredly thin out as he grew just as his own had. The hair and eye color had obviously been inherited from the boy's Konoha parent as his own hair color had been inherited from his father whom he closely resembled.

What little he'd seen of the boy's fighting style, resembled that of his relatives from his mother's side of the family.

&!&!&

"My mother's name was Kushina!" Naruto yelled, almost daring the man to make a comment as he remembered the embarrassment and the teasing he'd received when he'd first started at the Academy after one of the Instructors had rather rudely informed him and the rest of the class that Uzumaki had been his mother's surname not his father's and strongly implied that his father had never identified himself because he was ashamed of him.

The old man had told him afterward that his father had loved him very much, but had died before he could legally marry his mother. He tried to hold onto that while his classmates and the older children called him a bastard, but it still hurt.

The man and his water clone had apparently recognized his mother's name, because the next thing he knew, the water clone yelled "Cousin!" and he found himself being gathered into a cold and somewhat wet hug.

The hug didn't last very long because he fought to squirm away from it, and continued fighting to rescue his Sensei, but during the continuing battle, he could feel that the man's attitude regarding him had changed somehow - it was almost as if he had been excluded from the man's list of enemies - and he could almost swear he saw respect in his eyes when he managed to free Kakashi from the water prison he'd been trapped in.

All too soon, the battle was over.

He had known intellectually that when the battle was finished either they would be dead, or the enemy would but...

Why, why, why did it always have to be him? Why did his enemy have to be the only family he had? Why couldn't he have anything good in life without it or something of similar value being taken away from him almost immediately? Why?

He barely noticed Kakashi's attempts to comfort him until the man passed out and nearly crushed him when he collapsed.

As he helped carry Kakashi to Tazuna's house, he swore that if he ever saw that Hunter-nin again he would kill him.

(**!**)

Author's Note: Due to certain revelations about Kushina and the Land of Waves/Whirlpools there will be some differences from Family Reunion. Kushina will still have a shitload of siblings in this story as she did in Family Reunion, but she'll have gone to Konoha before her Konoha bound siblings did. Her oldest Sister will have headed to Mist already and married and some of her siblings will have gone to join her.


	2. The Team's Reaction

Kakashi felt a twinge of apprehension at the look of hope that rose in Naruto's eyes when he mentioned the possibility that the Demon of the Mist hadn't actually died. He knew that Naruto would be willing to fight the man if it came down to it, but he suspected that Naruto would be unable to kill him were it necessary and that would be one weakness Momochi Zabuza would exploit in an instant.

He knew it would come down to him fighting the swordsman while Naruto and possibly Sasuke fought his suspected accomplice but he feared that Naruto would do something foolish to protect his recently discovered family member and possibly get himself killed, or that he'd get himself hurt while trying to cause him a great deal of pain and misery when he killed Zabuza as he would be forced to defend himself, mainly because of what would happen to the boy if he harmed any of his own comrades for any reason whatsoever. Naruto was his father's son when it came to what was his, or what he considered to be his whether or not it was actually his. That had become patently obvious after what he had done to Mizuki when the traitor had injured Iruka.

He had about a week to think about it though, and come up with a viable plan. He had no desire to harm his sensei's son or allow harm to come to him, nor did he have any particular desire to defend himself from a pissed off Naruto who was intent on ripping his balls off for killing what was probably his only surviving relative considering the political climate in Kiri.

&!&!&

Sasuke shook his head at the suspicious looks Sakura was shooting Naruto, he could understand what the other boy was going through. If he found himself on a battlefield across from a previously unknown relative, he himself wasn't entirely sure how he'd react, especially if said relative was reluctant to fight him as Momochi Zabuza had appeared to have been with Naruto. He knew that wouldn't happen however, because the Uchiha had been careful not to leave any bastards for other villages to exploit.

"I'm sorry to say this, but you might have to watch that one." The bridge builder that they had been hired to protect said, gesturing to Naruto who was staring out the window. "The Uzumaki were highly family oriented and very skilled with seals. There were rumors of blood seals that prevented members of that clan from turning on their own before they scattered. If it comes down to a fight, he might be forced to protect his family despite the fact that he is your enemy."

Sakura's look of suspicion turned to horror.

"How do you know this?" he asked.

"Before this place was called the Land of Waves, it was the Land of Whirlpools and it had a Ninja village called Uzushiogakure that was famed for its Seal Masters, and the Longevity of its inhabitants, the foremost amongst these being the Uzumaki clan. The Second and Third Shinobi wars destroyed the village and much of the land and scattered the Shinobi across the world. When we rebuilt practically from the ground up after the Third great war, we renamed the place. When Uzushiogakure existed, it had very strong ties to Konoha as both the Uzumaki and Senju clans were distantly related, and the First Hokage's wife was an Uzumaki. In remembrance of this alliance, most of the Konoha ninja wear the symbol of Uzushio as part of their uniforms. It is because of this former alliance that we decided to turn to Konoha to help." Tazuna said.

"The symbol of Uzushiogakure?" Sakura asked.

Tazuna simply pointed to the red spiral on the back of Naruto's jacket. The same red spiral that could be seen on the back of a standard issue Chunin or Jounin vest and on a great deal of standard and not-so-standard ninja attire.

He had thought that Naruto had worn that spiral on at least one article of his clothing at all times out of hubris, but it would seem that apparently wasn't the case. Naruto apparently had as much of a right to wear that symbol as he himself did the Uchiha fan. It marked who his family was and where they had come from.

A blood seal preventing members of a clan from turning on each-other was a very sensible idea, it was a pity his own clan hadn't employed one.

&!&!&

Sakura snuck over to Naruto's futon when she was certain he was asleep. She had to know whether or not her teammate was going to be a liability.

She heard Sasuke ask "What are you doing?" as he got up from his own futon.

"I'm looking to see if he has any seals on him." she replied.

"You do realize that you'll have to strip him to do that, and I seriously doubt Naruto would be able to sleep through that." Sasuke said.

Sakura rapidly returned to her futon despite the fact that she probably wouldn't be able to sleep. She blushed at Naruto's likely reaction to waking up to her removing his clothing, considering the crush he seemed to have on her.

"I'll check him in the morning while he's in the shower." Sasuke said.

The next morning, Sakura could barely sit still at the breakfast table as she waited for Sasuke. The loud yelling that was coming from the bathroom had indicated that he might have been successful. An eternity later, Sasuke arrived, followed by Naruto who was pulling on a shirt and glaring at Sasuke.

"I found two." Sasuke said.

"Two what?" Kakashi-sensei - who had hobbled down just before her - asked.

"Seals. On Naruto." Sasuke replied.

"Odd. There should only be one, the large one on his abdomen. Where's the other one?" Kakashi-sensei replied.

Sasuke responded by pulling down the collar of Naruto's shirt. There was something there, where his neck met his shoulder. It was nearly invisible, and if you weren't looking for it, you wouldn't have noticed it.

"...the hell?" Kakashi-sensei said.


	3. It's Not Fair

Haku had gone out to fetch medicinal herbs because Master Zabuza was well enough that he didn't need to be constantly looked after. It was while he was out, dressed in rather feminine clothing so he looked less suspicious, that he spotted the blond boy that Master Zabuza had claimed as family laying unguarded in a clearing.

The boy was sprawled out, fast asleep with a kunai in his hand, much in the same way Master Zabuza slept when he wasn't ill. Unlike Master Zabuza however - as he learned when he shook the boy awake - he wasn't semi-aware of his surroundings and able to wake up prepared to fight at the smallest sign of danger. Instead, he had rubbed his eyes after yawning a couple of times and stretching.

Shortly after waking up, the boy proved himself to be none too bright when he cheerfully and rather trustingly followed him, blushing and calling him "Nee-chan" the entire time. It was slightly disturbing, but he knew he deserved it considering what he was wearing, and it was far milder than what other people had said and tried to do. Despite several lewd comments and insinuations, Master Zabuza had never "tried his charms" or showed any interest in doing so. The only comments Master Zabuza had made about his apparent beauty were that he could probably get away with wearing women's clothing for a couple more years.

He studied the boy whose name was Uzumaki Naruto as he helped him gather the medicinal herbs he was collecting for Master Zabuza. On the surface, Master Zabuza and the boy looked almost nothing alike, but further study revealed a certain resemblance that could easily go unnoticed.

There were faint traces of red in the boy's bright blond hair just as there were in Master Zabuza's when the sun hit it just right. There was some similarity in the shape of their noses, and the way their mouths curled up at the beginning of a smile. The shape of their hands were also similar, and both of their ring fingers were just a tiny bit longer than their index fingers. He didn't know whether or not Naruto's and Master Zabuza's eyebrows were similarly shaped as Master Zabuza's had been burned off during an accident involving a faulty tag that had blown up in his face and never properly grew back. There was also a faint similarity in movement that training couldn't account for, especially considering that Kiri and Konoha had different fighting styles.

When he asked Naruto why he was out here, the boy had replied that he was training to become stronger. He himself was somewhat familiar with all night training sessions, and watching such training sessions on occasion.

When he had asked the boy if he had someone precious to protect, the look in the boy's eyes told him that he was probably just as familiar with pain and loneliness as he was in the few moments before he recalled his precious people who he would undoubtedly give everything for, just as he himself would give everything for Master Zabuza. It was now clear to him why Naruto had sworn to avenge the death of a man who he had only known for a few minutes.

He had felt a pang of jealousy that hadn't entirely gone away when Zabuza - or his water clone rather - had hugged Naruto, but he had understood. Master Zabuza had found him on that bridge several years ago shortly after the last of his younger cousins on his mother's side of the family had died. Master Zabuza had gone a long time without his family, and meeting a relative of his beloved mother was undoubtedly a very special moment despite the circumstances under which it had happened. He could only pray that there would be a moment when Master Zabuza would hug him like that.

When he finished gathering the last of the herbs and got up to leave, he informed Naruto that he was a boy. The crushed look on his face when his newly forming crush was destroyed was sort of adorable.

He wasn't sure whether or not he should be flattered that the boy had found him more attractive than some girl named Sakura who was apparently very pretty.

&!&!&

It was after the girly looking boy who was way prettier than Sakura had left that the thing that had been bothering him the entire time he helped him gather plants finally hit him. Haku smelled just like that Hunter-nin that had carried his cousin off. He was tempted to go after him, but decided to leave it. Kakashi had said that his cousin wasn't dead, and that meant that the Hunter-nin had actually saved his life. The fact that he thought that he might have smelled his cousin on the girly boy seemed to confirm this. Deciding to put that behind him, he now had another problem that was bothering him. Did his being attracted to a boy however briefly mean he was gay, or did his not knowing it was a boy negate the issue entirely?

Sasuke arrived moments after Haku left.

"Did you see the person in pink that just left?" he asked.

"Yeah, she just passed me." Sasuke replied.

"Tell me, prettier than Sakura or not." he asked.

"Prettier than Sakura and Ino put together." Sasuke replied rather reluctantly.

"It's not fair!" he wailed.

"What's not fair?" Sasuke asked.

"That was a boy." he replied.

"Damn" Sasuke said.


	4. The Fate of the Mist Uzumaki

Due to the temporary paralysis on top of the injuries he'd received from the Copy Ninja Kakashi, there had been little Zabuza could do other than sit and think. One subject his thoughts constantly drifted to was his young cousin from Konoha. From there, his thoughts would head towards the rest of his family. Looking back on the fight, he had little doubt that they were related. The boy yelled the way his mother had when his father had come home drunk and charged into danger with little regard for his safety like his uncles and younger cousins had been wont to do. The kid moved like them too.

Seeing him had brought up many painful memories. The boy was brash and loud just like his uncle Ryu. Uncle Kenji had been more reserved, and his mother had been somewhere in between. The boy was also prone to making pointless speeches about becoming the Kage of his village, like his little cousin Midoriko who had followed him about everywhere when she was small. They, the twins Akira, and Hikaru, and little Momoko the second had all been dead by his nineteenth birthday. It had been when he was nineteen that he had found Haku.

His mother Karin had been the eldest of seven children. She had met his father during the Chunin Exams and they had kept up correspondence. When they decided that they were old enough, they got married and settled in his father's home village much to the chagrin of his mother's parents. His mother had pretty much lost contact with her relatives until two of her younger brothers - the twins Ryu and Kenji - had shown up on her doorstep carrying their sister Momoko.

The entire family had known that Kushina was special practically since she was born. While their branch of the clan was usually above average, Kushina herself managed to stand out on her own. It had been because of this and some other quality that Kushina had been selected to be the next Jinchuriki of the Nine-tailed fox. She had apparently done her job until about twelve years ago when something had apparently gone very very wrong. If it was what he thought it was - but it may not have been, considering the fact he spent more time focusing on swords than seals much to the disappointment of his uncles - he was pretty certain that he knew Naruto's birthday.

When his mother's siblings had decided to join the exodus from Uzushiogakure, there had been a rather vicious argument. Ryu and Kenji had wanted to join his mother in Kiri, and Sato and Ao had wanted to join Kushina in Konoha. In the end, the Uzumaki stubbornness had won out and they had split up, with Momoko following Uncle Ryu and Uncle Kenji to the land of Water.

Momoko ended up falling ill during the boat ride to the land of Water and died shortly after arriving in Kirigakure. His mother had died giving birth to his stillborn sister after a rather difficult pregnancy when he was six. The deaths of his uncles and younger cousins on suicide missions after Ryu and Kenji had refused to turn the clan's sealing techniques over to the village - claiming that there was a seal that prevented them from doing so - one too many times had been a major contributing factor in his decision to kill the Mizukage.

Now that he could move his arms properly, he found himself occasionally rubbing the seal that was on his back at the juncture between his neck and shoulder. The permanent and so far irremovable seal was unique to the Uzumaki clan, and its creation was passed from parent to child. His own mother - apparently sensing her impending death - had left him the instructions in a scroll that could only be opened by him or one of his female descendants. He had not yet had cause to use it. He had no doubt that as Kushina's son, Naruto had a seal just like his own, and that had been one of the reasons he'd been reluctant to go all out against the boy after he began to get over the shock that he had a surviving relative.

On the day an Uzumaki child was born, either their mother or their father - depending on which was the Uzumaki in a mixed marriage, and whether or not the mother was up to putting the seal on the child at that time in an in clan marriage - would place a certain seal on the infant. While they could argue and fight as much as they wanted, a person who had that seal could not deliberately land a killing blow on another who had a matching seal. Had he not learned that Naruto was his cousin, things could have been disastrous. He could have been killed by the Copy Ninja Kakashi in the moment he was held back from killing the boy.

The question was would he order Haku to kill the boy, considering the fact that they were on opposite sides of this particular conflict. Usually he would have done his mission and given the order with absolutely no hesitation, but...Naruto was family, and as his mother and uncles had repeatedly told him, family came first.

He would have to make that decision when the time came. For now though, he would focus on getting better.


	5. Battle at the Bridge

Zabuza's jaw nearly dropped at Naruto's entrance. That had to be worse than what he'd heard about Maito Gai's "Dynamic Entry" which was legendary for being a somewhat painful joke. Was that kid really serious? The last time he'd seen anything like that was when a couple of kids were playing at being Ninjas. That shuriken must have hit Haku by chance or something. How the hell could he be related to THAT?

He grabbed a few shuriken of his own from his pouch and tried to throw them in order to definitively test the theory since there seemed to be a lull in the battle while the others tried to recover from their own incredulity over the boy's entry. Key word there being tried. The slight burn in a certain area and his arm stopping prevented him from completing the throw. Naruto's mother apparently hadn't been negligent in that particular duty.

"Fuck." he said as he rubbed the spot where a certain seal was located. "We really are related."

He could tell from Kakashi's look that he had found the action to be significant for some reason. Kakashi had probably already found the boy's seal, if he was anything approaching a competent Jounin instructor. Fortunately for Naruto, he hadn't gone messing with something he didn't understand.

The battle continued after Naruto proved to have been born with roughly the same amount of common sense as his cousin Akira and crawled into Haku's jutsu to join his teammate who clearly wasn't happy to see him there.

He'd then focused on his battle with the Copy Ninja until the oppressing killer intent and a hint of a strange red Chakra blew by.

"Three guesses who Aunt Kushina's successor was." he muttered to himself as he tried to reign in the fear he was feeling as the battle continued.

All too soon, he was pinned by a pack of dogs and the Copy Ninja was bragging about some jutsu he'd invented that had a longish powering up time.

&!&!&

As Kakashi powered up his Raikiri, a thought suddenly came to him. He powered it down as he moved to attack. That was apparently a rather good thing as the next thing he saw was Momochi Zabuza's young accomplice standing there looking confused. The swordsman standing behind his teen-aged human shield made some comment about him being a coward.

"I'm just being smart." he replied. "Naruto would never forgive me if I killed his only living relative, and since I'm going to be stuck with him at least until he becomes a Chunin, that could be troublesome."

"Only living relative?" Zabuza asked.

"Kushina-san's brothers died during the Third Shinobi War. Kushina died soon after giving birth to Naruto. Naruto's father died while fighting the Kyuubi." he replied.

His words had apparently distracted the swordsman enough that he dropped the Mist Jutsu that had been getting progressively weaker as the battle progressed and its user grew tired. It was then that a gang of mercenaries with Gato at its head was revealed to be standing at the end of the bridge.

Gato made some rather stupid speech that pretty much summed up to: he had absolutely no intention of paying Zabuza.

"It seems that our fight is over Kakashi." Zabuza said when Gato was finished talking.

"It looks that way, yes." he replied.

"I'll take the fifty on the left if you take the fifty on the right." Zabuza said, as he began to shred the bandages that surrounded his mouth with the sharpened teeth that were practically a trademark of Kiri's Seven Swordsmen.

"Just leave some for Naruto." he said.

"As long as you leave a few for Haku." Zabuza replied.

With the conflict between them gone, a new battle was joined, this time with them working together.

&!&!&

"Uh..." Naruto said as he looked at Haku, not quite certain as to what had just happened. Haku looked back at him and shrugged.

He shrugged himself, before making a couple of hand seals and yelling "Shadow Clone Jutsu."

Since he was kinda tired, only about two hundred of him joined the fray. It was at that point that the villagers led by Inari arrived.


	6. Homecoming

Zabuza knew that he wouldn't be welcomed into Konoha with open arms despite being related to one of the village's staunchest allies. He followed Naruto and his team anyway, telling the boy what little he knew about his mother and stories about the rest of the family.

He knew he'd stepped in it when Kakashi face-palmed as he told Naruto about Senju nee Uzumaki Mito and her successor. The looks on the faces of Naruto's teammates told him that this particular information hadn't been common knowledge in Konoha. It really wasn't common knowledge anywhere other than with what was left of the Uzumaki clan either.

Asking the boy about how he'd learned the Kage Bunshin at his age had led to him apparently stepping into another mess. The boy had launched into a tale of how some treacherous bastard named Mizuki had tricked him into stealing a scroll of "Forbidden Jutsus" that had been sealed by the First Hokage and how someone named Iruka had come to rescue him when Mizuki tried to kill him.

"If the First Hokage sealed the scroll, how could he open it? Wouldn't the best security measure be to use a blood based seal and key each Hokage into it?" he mused.

"Zip it." the Copy Ninja Kakashi said, giving him a strange look.

"Is something wrong?" he asked.

"Other than the fact that you're a walking security disaster...nothing, nothing at all." the Copy Ninja replied.

Naruto had apparently brushed off on Haku, because he could hear Haku snickering behind him.

&!&!&

Iruka had stood by the main gate waiting as he had done just about every spare moment he could grab between the Academy and the Mission Office for the last few days. Naruto should have come back by now. He'd heard that there had been some trouble with some former Mist Chunin several hours out, and he was worried. He knew he wouldn't stop worrying until Naruto was standing in front of him talking a mile a minute about his most recent adventure.

Finally, after days of waiting, he caught a flash of orange topped with a bit of yellow fluff. Naruto was walking near the back of the group that seemed to consist of his team and a pair of strangers. The boy was rapidly chattering at one of his companions - a man wearing gray pants - who seemed to be able to follow him if his nods were any indication. Upon seeing him, he quickly broke off his conversation and raced towards him.

Naruto yelled "IRUKA-SENSEI" as he practically flew across the distance that separated them and knocked him on his ass with one of his flying tackle hugs. He was soon forced to pry Naruto's arms off of him as the boy had once again underestimated his own strength and started squeezing the life out of him. With Naruto, the phrase "loved to bits" had the potential to become disturbingly literal.

He did his best to follow along when Naruto started chattering about some bad guy, a kid, a couple of rogue ninja, and...a cousin?

&!&!&

Sakura flopped down into the stuffed armchair across from the couch on which her mother was sitting, drinking tea.

"How did your mission go dear?" her mother asked.

"It was horrible. There were these two really ugly Ninja who attacked us on our first day out. Then when we got to Wave, this guy who was called the Demon of the Mist attacked us. It turned out that the guy was Naruto's first cousin on his mother's side. Apparently their mothers got separated when half the family decided to go to Konoha and the other half decided to move to Kiri when their village collapsed or something. Then Haku pretended to kill the Mist guy, and Naruto got upset, and Kakashi-sensei passed out while comforting him, and we had to carry him to Tazuna's house." she said before taking a deep breath.

"About a week later, Momochi-san - that's that Demon of the Mist guy who got the name when he murdered his entire graduating class - and Haku attacked the bridge, and there was this big fight. I was guarding Tazuna and didn't see much. At the end, I thought Haku had killed Sasuke, but it turned out that he'd only been knocked out. Kakashi-sensei, Momochi-san, Haku, Naruto and about two hundred of his shadow clones, and a small army of the local villagers ended up fighting the army of mercenaries Gato brought in because he didn't want to pay Momochi-san or something, and Gato got killed along with alot of the mercenaries. Momochi-san and Haku decided to follow us home after the bridge was completed and our mission was over. Momochi-san's got really sharp teeth, and it's creepy when he smiles." she continued, before taking another deep breath.

Her mother stared at her in open mouthed shock, her cup of tea completely forgotten half way up to her mouth.

"Did you know that Naruto is so important? I didn't." she said.

"I-Important?" he mother asked, as she tried to gather her wits.

"Yeah, he's the Jinchuriki to the Kyuubi." she replied.

Her mother's teacup crashed to the floor.

"H-how d-do you know this?" her mother asked, not moving to clean up the cup or its spilled contents.

"Momochi-san told us all about it. He and Naruto are both distantly related to the first Hokage's wife. After Uchiha Madara had used the Kyuubi at the Valley of the End, Mito - that's the First Hokage's wife - used her clan's sealing techniques to seal the fox inside her so it couldn't be used against the village. Naruto's mother Kushina was selected to be her replacement when she was about to die of old age. Momochi-san says that the reason the Kyuubi was turned loose on the village was because someone messed with Kushina's seal when Naruto was born. When Kushina died, they couldn't find another female Uzumaki in time, so they used Naruto." she replied.

&!&!&

Zabuza knew that the only reason he'd left the Hokage Tower alive was because the Hokage had a soft spot for his cousin. That, and he apparently didn't want a Jinchuriki out to avenge his fallen relative tearing up the village. As it was, he was now officially stuck in Konoha and he would have to stay unless he wanted Konoha Hunter-nin out for his blood as well. Apparently he had known or put together one too many S Class secrets and become a liability without realizing it. He walked into the village feeling slightly naked without the sword that he wouldn't get back until the first three years of his probation were up.

Another bit of his attire that had changed, was that he was now wearing something that had once belonged to his mother, and it was getting more stares than his old Mist headband did. He figured - and the whispers confirmed it - that it was because while you could see a Mist headband just about anytime, one from Whirlpool was quite the rarity, especially now.


	7. New Home

Zabuza stared at the apartment. He and Haku had been given the apartment next door to Naruto and a small stipend for necessities until he could find a job. He really hadn't expected much considering the neighborhood and the condition of the building, but...

He experimentally flipped the switch next to the door.

At least it had electricity.

He turned the tap on the kitchen sink.

And running water.

He decided to wait until Haku arrived before they made any decisions about furniture. Haku had been called to speak with the Hokage after he'd been dismissed, and he had no idea how long that would take.

Haku came back nearly an hour later with a rather pensive expression on his face.

"Is something wrong Haku?" he asked.

Haku paused, apparently trying to find a way to put his turbulent thoughts into words.

"The Hokage told me that I could start a clan here in Konoha when I was ready." Haku finally said.

Zabuza paused. Thanks to several less than thoroughly thought through actions, he was stuck in Konoha, and since Haku refused to leave his side, he was stuck here as well. He'd never really considered the future beyond his dream which had seemed to be a rather distant one after his first failure and an even more distant one now, since Konoha would be far more serious about taking him out if he left. The current administration in Kiri had put his name on the rolls of Missing-nin more for show, but wouldn't hesitate to kill him if he ever returned. He'd always been a more in the moment kind of guy anyway, but it looked like he would have to very seriously consider the future now.

"That will have to be your decision Haku." he said. "Until then though, I recommend that you don't wear women's clothing. You don't want to give any potential brides the wrong idea."

"Master Zabuza?" Haku asked.

"Yes?" he replied.

"The Hokage wants to assign me to the hospital as a medic. Will...will that be alright?" Haku asked nervously. He could see that the boy was interested.

"Will you be paid?" he asked. The hospital would be a good place for the boy since was a damn good medic and he'd never had the heart to kill anyone, and money was going to be tight for a while.

"Yes." Haku replied.

"That's fine then. Be sure to do a good job." he replied.

&!&!&

Naruto had been walking home from the Ichiraku ramen stand when the rather stern looking old man with Hyuuga eyes came up to him. The look in the man's eyes was rather uncommon for a denizen of Konoha, instead of hatred or disgust, he had a look of...determination?

Before he even knew what happened, the old man had grabbed him, pulled him into a rather awkward position that he found surprisingly difficult to escape from, reached through his open jacket, and yanked his shirt up.

"And here, I'd been worrying all this time." The old man said smiling, and looking somewhat relieved.

"Experimental seal invented by the Fourth Hokage my ass. If that isn't an Uzumaki special, I'll eat my underwear." The man said as he let him go. He then ruffled his hair before walking off, whistling something as he did so.

&!&!&

"Ah Danzo, right on time. Come to speak with me about my decisions earlier today?" the Third Hokage said, not even bothering to look up form his paperwork at the person who had just entered his office.

"Yes." Danzo said, not bothering with small talk.

"You can easily figure out the obvious reasons as to why I allowed Momochi...er, Uzumaki Zabuza to live, considering the way Kushina reacted when her brothers died." The Hokage said as he idly flipped through a report.

"That is sensible, such fury directed at the village rather than the enemy would be...unfortunate." Danzo said. "I came regarding the boy though."

"Yes, Haku. You were going to recommend forcing him to start breeding now were you not?" The Hokage said as he stamped a supplies requisition form.

"You know me too well." Danzo said.

"That recommendation would be unwise. Considering the boy's nature, he will rebel in the only way he can by killing himself and you won't get very far if anywhere." The Hokage said. "Allowing the boy to breed in his own time will create stronger ties between both him and his future family and Konoha, allow him to put down roots as it were. As his current loyalties are to a person who will be staying in Konoha, rather than a village, this will be much easier. If his life in Konoha is relatively pleasant, he will pass on his love for the place as well as any horror stories he may have about his previous home."

"I don't see how that..." Danzo said.

"Other than the fact that he can and will be encouraged to have a large family rather than the one or two you might get using your method? I prefer my shinobi to be truly loyal to their home, rather than be conditioned to be so. Conditioning can and - in the past - has broken quite spectacularly. There is also the strong possibility that other lines that were sitting on the fence will see how the boy is treated and use that to decide whether or not to come here in the future as well. Other villages are snatching up lines that could be ours if we play our cards right in this situation." The Hokage replied.

"You know, there are times when I remember why you were chosen to be Hokage." Danzo replied after a moment of thought.

"The "Soft option" isn't always the wrong option Danzo, especially in this case. Remember, if that boy or any of his known offspring "mysteriously vanish" you'll be answering to me or my successor, and probably have to deal with an exceedingly upset Naruto as he seems to have claimed Haku as one of his few friends." The Hokage said.

&!&!&

Uzumaki Masao stared into the distance. His first grandson...his first grandson had...If he hadn't, his first grandson wouldn't have...

When he had left Uzushiogakure long ago, he had thought this would be a nice place to settle with his wife, son, and the new baby that was on the way. It hadn't been too close to the ocean that he had feared since his father had died, it wasn't too rainy like Lightening and Fire were, and despite being somewhat desolate, wasn't a desert like the Wind country was.

For many years, this place had been just as eerily beautiful and majestic as it had been to him when he had come here for the Chunin exams as a child, but now...

His son hadn't been too interested in the Uzumaki clan techniques, preferring flashy jutsus that suited his fiery personality and chakra type perfectly. His grandson however...his grandson had absorbed every lesson he had given him like a sponge, and had paid for that with his life.

He should have burned the old scrolls and closed the door on that part of the past, they had not been worth the price his family had paid for them.

His grandson couldn't have handed over the clan techniques if he had wanted to.

Looking at his son, he could see that the man was thinking what he was. With Kinmaru gone, this place was no longer home. But, how could they leave, and if they did leave, where would they go?


	8. Clan Matters

The Hokage wasn't certain whether he loved or hated Momochi...Uzumaki Zabuza. Whether or not it had been planned on his part, he somehow seemed to have solved the Sasuke problem, and reduced a sizable amount of the paperwork he had to deal with in the process.

After one too many intruders who had taken exception to the fact that a Missing-nin from Kiri had taken up residence in Konoha had distrubed Zabuza's sleep by being caught in the traps he'd set throughout the apartment building during the first few days after his arrival, the man had come up with the bright idea of claiming the nearly abandoned complex that had been Uzumaki Naruto's home for the last six years as the Uzumaki Clan compound under some obscure law from the founding of the village. After the man had managed to correctly fill out all one hundred and some-odd pages of paperwork as well as the more than fifty pages of Clan Registration Forms in under three days after he got them, he felt that it was only fair to sign the approval. By turning the building into a clan compound rather than an apartment complex, the Uzumaki had been given the authority to make the traps within lethal, and if it was deemed necessary kill any intruders. Both he and Naruto promptly made the village aware of this little fact.

To avoid certain legal issues, it had been decided that the Konoha born Uzumaki Naruto would be named as Head of the clan since he currently wasn't a wanted man. They managed to get away with it since due to some oversight, the Uzumaki were never registered as an official residing clan in Konoha and the first Uzumaki to do so could name themselves Clan Head whether or not he or she was so in reality.

Upon seeing that his teammate was Head of a clan, the arrogant Uchiha boy had refused to be outdone and demanded to be named Head of his clan. As the previous Head was deceased and the next in line was currently a Missing-nin, this had been allowed as the Uchiha boy had legally become an adult the day he became a Genin. Upon becoming Head of Clan, the Uchiha boy was promptly forced to deal with the day to day responsibilities his regent was supposed to take care of, including the maintenance of the Uchiha Clan Compound that neighbors were starting to complain was becoming an eyesore, and dealing with petitions for outside intervention from clans that were still technically under the Uchiha Clan's protection.

The end result after the older Uzumaki had pointed out that Naruto wasn't doing a half-assed job and was getting his training and missions done as well as tending to all of his responsibilities towards his clan (which at the moment were only filling out the odd form, paying the utilities on time, and making sure Umino Iruka and Haku who were under his protection weren't homeless) was that the Uchiha boy had become swamped in paperwork. It probably wouldn't have been so bad if the brat hadn't decided to reinstate the "hostage" system and ordered that one family unit from each clan in his protection be placed solely under Uchiha authority. After the inundation of paperwork, the Uchiha boy was forced to deal with a new headache when he found that he needed to provide suitable homes for the new families in his care, and was forced to reopen the Uchiha district for habitation which caused a new flood of paperwork to pour in especially after an inspection revealed that less than half of the homes were found to be "habitable" and three shop buildings needed several upgrades and four more needed extensive renovations before they could be considered up to code.

As far as he and anyone else who was watching from the sidelines were concerned, the kid deserved what he got since he had arrogantly demanded that he be given those duties and never bothered to stop and consider the fact that there was a great deal of difference between a clan with two members, a one building compound, little to no monetary resources, and two clans with one member each under its protection, and a clan with one member, a compound that consisted of a sizable section of the village, considerable monetary resources, and ten clans with dozens to hundreds of members each under its protection in regards to responsibilities before he made his decision.

With the Uchiha boy - who was now taking up the role of Chief-of-Police in the soon to be reinstated (now that there were recruits who were technically under the Uchiha banner) Military Police Force out of some misguided sense of pride - completely absorbed in clan matters, there was less chance of him going rogue or causing trouble later.

With the Uchiha boy dealing with his clan's matters, there was the added bonus that the petitions that had been coming to his desk from those under the Uchiha's protection as well as the complaints from the neighbors and requests for mediation from Independent clans and clans under the protection of the Hyuuga, the Senju, and the Nara to resolve issues with clans under the protection of the Uchiha hadn't hit his desk in the last couple of days now that they had a "proper channel" to go through.

&!&!&

Uzumaki Masao felt slightly uncomfortable as he crossed the bridge into the country that was now called Wave. It had been a very long time since he had been over this much water. That, and his old instincts were screaming that it was very, very bad to be out in the open like this especially when you're being followed.

The journey had started when his son Koyo had pointed out that Kinmaru would have liked to have had his ashes buried in his old ancestral home, and somehow got permission for the family to travel. They had been followed from the place he'd once called home by at least one Ninja, and when they had reached the borders of Fire Country, they had picked up an additional tail who seemed merely curious as to what they were doing there.

Eventually, he, his son, his daughter, his son in law, his daughter in law, and three remaining grandchildren reached the other side of the oddly named bridge. They then decided to stop for the night in the nearby village. The local inn was a somewhat shabby affair that had recently had a new coat of paint added to it, and its wraparound porch appeared to be the local hangout for the elderly crowd. Deciding to get a feel for the locals while his son checked them in, he attempted to strike up a conversation.

"Naruto's a rather odd name for a bridge." he said, marking himself as an outsider, and therefore either something to be shunned or an interesting source of new stories depending on the local attitude.

One of the men peered at him intently, taking in everything from the bottoms of his travel-worn sandals to the top of his head of graying red hair.

"Now you guys start showing up. Naruto was in the Academy and Zabuza was hired by the enemy and even he helped us in the end, what's your excuse?" the man said.

"Excuse? Er, excuse for what?" he asked, completely confused.

"As to why you weren't here when we needed you. When your lot settled here, you promised to protect this place. We understood why you left during the wars since your presence was detrimental at the time, but when everything settled down you never came back." the old man - who, now that he really thought about it was around his age - said.

"Leave it Kita. Their home got trashed worse than ours did, I can understand considering we were almost broken ourselves before Naruto came and inspired Inari, and helped bring two of the enemy to our side." another man said.

"Who is this Naruto you keep mentioning?" he asked. The men spoke of him as if he should know him.

"Uzumaki Naruto, son of Uzumaki Kushina and some nameless blond from Konoha. Tazuna here named the bridge after him, and considering what he did, it's rather fitting. If he hadn't inspired Inari, Inari wouldn't have shamed us into fighting, if Inari hadn't gotten us to fight, we would have never been able to drive off Gato's men and there was a good chance that Naruto and his team as well as his cousin would have gotten themselves killed trying to do so. The boy had fought not for the mission he'd been assigned to, but because he saw it as the right thing to do." one of the men who had previously been quiet said.

"The name Kushina sounds vaguely familiar, but..." he said, musing over which branch of the clan this Naruto person could have come from.

"I think I heard Naruto and his cousin Zabuza discussing it at one point while Zabuza was recovering from the battle, there were several siblings mentioned and the names Sato and Kenji stuck in my memory because my uncle was named Sato and a cousin of mine has a kid named Kenji." one of the men said.

"Oh,_ them_. We quit speaking with that branch of the clan after the wind jutsu Seiki used in a misguided attempt at mowing the lawn destroyed my father's favorite cherry tree. There was a rather nasty row between Dad and Seiki's parents, and we haven't spoken with them since. " he said, once he figured out whose kids that lot were. Seiki had been older, and therefore cool when he was a kid. He had also been rather prolific, having had seven children instead of the average two or three.

When Masao sat down to dinner that night, the beginnings of a plan had begun to form in his mind. When the man called Tazuna read out a letter that one Uzumaki Naruto had sent his grandson to the entire inn, the plan began to cement. It seemed that it was time to reopen lines of communication with a certain branch of their clan. What was one prized cherry tree and a bunch of rather creative insults in the grand scheme of things, especially when his family's life was at stake?

The next morning when he buried his grandson next to his father's memorial marker in the ruins of the village which looked to have been partially cannibalized to build the bridge they had come into Wave on, he found his son looking at him expectantly.

"Weren't you going to put the scrolls in?" his son asked.

"No." he replied sadly. He'd planned to bury the scrolls that contained their clan techniques and research his line had done with his grandson, but he would need them now.

"Why not?" his son asked, a curious emotion crossing his face.

"We are going to need something to offer." he replied.

"Offer? To who?" his son asked.

"To the new head of our clan." he replied. Family and the Clan were all, and they had been scattered across the world without anyone to lead them for a long time, far too long a time. Someone had finally filled the needed post, and was calling them all home. Now that he and his no longer had a home, he would heed that call.


	9. Family Tree so far

Uzumaki family tree so far (sorry about the format I had a rather nice one that I spent a while working on, but when I tried saving it here, it screwed it up):

Uzumaki Ancestor + wife = Uzumaki Ancestor's children 1 & 2

Uzumaki Ancestor's child #1 + Wife = Uzumaki Masao's father

Uzumaki Masao's father + Wife = Uzumaki Masao and unknown # of siblings

Uzumaki Masao + Wife = Uzumaki Koyo and his sister

Uzumaki Koyo + Wife = Uzumaki Kinmaru

Uzumaki Masao's daughter + Husband = Grandchildren #s 2, 3 & 4

&!&!&

Uzumaki ancestor's child #2 + Wife = Uzumaki Seiki's father

Uzumaki Seiki's father + Wife = Uzumaki Seiki and unknown # of siblings

Uzumaki Seiki + Wife = Uzumaki Karin, Uzumaki Sato, Uzumaki Kenji, Uzumaki Ryu, Uzumaki Momoko, Uzumaki Ao and Uzumaki Kushina

Uzumaki Karin + Husband = Momochi Zabuza

Uzumaki Kenji + Wife = Uzumaki Momoko II

Uzumaki Ryu + Wife = Uzumaki Midoriko, Uzumaki Akira, Uzumaki Hikaru

Uzumaki Kuzhina + Husband = Uzumaki Naruto

Uzumaki Sato, Uzumaki Ao and Uzumaki Momoko died without issue. Uzumaki Momoko II, Uzumaki Midoriko, Uzumaki Akira, Uzumaki Hikaru all died without issue before Momochi Zabuza's 19th birthday.


	10. Clan Politics and New Arrivals

Naruto slammed his head on his new - technically third-hand, purchased at a yard sale that one of the civilian clans had been holding - desk as Iruka volunteered some of his precious free time to give him a crash course in "Clan Politics" so he didn't do something stupid and really step in it. Pretty much all Naruto had gotten out of the lecture however had been a headache.

Apparently there were over two hundred clans in Konoha with membership that ranged anywhere from one to somewhere in the hundreds with an average number of membership of about twenty-five. Over two-thirds of these clans were "Civilian", which meant that they mainly consisted of civilians with the occasional Ninja thrown in, as opposed to "Ninja" clans which consisted mainly of Shinobi with the occasional civilian thrown in.

To make things more interesting, the clans were divided into two categories, "Independent", and "Protected". Basically what this supposedly boils down to was that in a fight, Independent clans were pretty much on their own, while a Protected clan could drag another clan into the mess. Due to a number of other factors, it was a bit more complicated than that.

"Protector" clans were by definition Independent clans that held one or more clans under their protection in a formal agreement, more often than not, one that was made before the founding of Konoha. In exchange for their protection, a clan could make demands of the clans under its protection as Sasuke had done. These demands could include monetary remuneration, food, supplies and other goods, support in battle, and hostages to ensure good behavior. In exchange, the Protector clan can be called upon to help settle disputes between the clans under its protection, or disputes between clans under its protection and clans outside its protection.

The Uchiha, the Senju, the Hyuuga, the Nara and now the Uzumaki - thanks to his sponsorship of Haku, and Iruka finding his former student's suggestion cute until the formal letter announcing his status as a "Protected Clan" arrived from the Hokage's office - all had more than one clan under their protection. Other clans in the village had either one or none. The fact that the Namikaze were under the protection of the Nara became irrelevant the instant Naruto was named the Head of the Uzumaki Clan.

Iruka sighed, shook his head, and started going over the complicated clan relationship chart once again.

&!&!&

Inuzuka Ashi - who had been convinced his parents hated him, and decided to spread the hate when he himself became a parent by rather uncreatively naming his kids Ichi, Ni, San, Yon, Go, Roku, Nana and Hachi (which he managed to get away with because his wife also had an axe to grind in the naming department) - stood in front of his new boss' desk looking at the new Police Chief in concern. He had been helping get the Konoha Military Police Force - which dealt with both Shinobi and Civilian crime but didn't have the authority to arrest the ANBU who had taken over much of the force's duties after its collapse following the Massacre - back up and running since Tsume had sent him to the Uchiha compound, gleefully commenting over the fact that she could finally "Get rid of his brats" before laughing maniacally. After all of the effort he'd put in in the last few weeks, he didn't want it all to go to waste with the last of the Uchiha dying of overwork.

The Uchiha boy - who was a couple years younger than his youngest son - didn't look all that good. He was showing signs of extreme physical exhaustion as well as slight Chakra exhaustion, and some serious vitamin deficiencies. Apparently, without anyone around to tell him to stop to eat and sleep, he hadn't been doing so.

That was going to stop now.

He picked up the Uchiha brat who was currently too weak to do more than squirm, and had been on his way to the window and from there, the brat's home in the Uchiha District, when San poked her head in.

"Did you ask him about the Burglary and Homicide divisions yet?" San asked.

&!&!&

Masao stood over the corpse of a man who until recently had been one of his fellow countrymen, breathing heavily. The fight had been short, extremely brutal, and had taken alot out of him. His family had been ambushed by their tail on their way out of Wave. It had only been their desperation to survive that had allowed them to carry the day, and even then it had been close. Out of the family, only he and his son were Ninja - his granddaughter who had joined the Academy following the example of her older cousin didn't count - and he'd retired from that life long ago.

He had been aware of the fact that his son had made some sort of bargain, but he didn't think that he would betray the Clan in the way he had. The Clan scrolls were to stay with the clan and be buried with the last of their clan when he or she died, as he had originally planned to do when he buried the scrolls with his grandson, symbolically calling an end to the Uzumaki as a Shinobi clan. He could understand where his child was coming from though, since he himself had wanted to be rid of the accursed scrolls and the techniques they contained that had led to his grandson's demise. However, there was no way in hell he would turn them over to the people who had killed his grandson over them.

After tending to his and his family's injuries, it was decided that it would be a good idea to get the hell out of Wave before word of their betrayal made its way back to their former home. Over the next couple days, the family slowly and carefully made it's way to Konoha while Masao did everything he could to assure his Leaf tail that he had no intention of causing harm. It was a nerve-wracking experience, and he half expected to discover that there had been more than one team following his family from their former home up until the moment they arrived at the Village Hidden in the Leaves.

Eventually, they found themselves at Konoha's gates. Masao and Koyo both moved to the front of the group and held their hands up in the traditional "We come in peace" gesture before reaching for their old Hitai-ate and setting them on the desk at the guard station. They then stood back, and made no further moves towards entering the village. Either they would be accepted or they wouldn't. If they were, then they would search for the new Head of their clan. If they weren't, any gestures that were seen as even vaguely threatening could be detrimental to their continued survival, especially considering the village from which they had come.

&!&!&

Inuzuka Yon sat at the check-in station with his dog Han and current partner and former teammate Aburame Kochu. He would have protested the waste of their tracking abilities if he wasn't still recovering from having his leg broken in three places and she wasn't recovering from the loss of half her colony of Kikaichu.

It had been during the third hour of their shift - when he was half convinced he'd die of boredom - that the family showed up. The family consisted mainly of a bunch of redheads though there were two brunettes and two of the youngest redheads could be considered more of an auburn.

Two of the three men - an older man who had graying red hair that was more gray than red and a man in his mid thirties who was obviously his son - moved to the front of the group. They came towards them slowly in a non-threatening manner that was beginning to unnerve him. Generally, the more a person tried to show that they weren't a threat, the bigger a threat they were.

Each man set a hitai-ate down on the sign-in desk in front of him. There was an image of a stylized pair of rocks - one larger, one smaller - engraved in the metal plate of both forehead protectors.

It figured. Just when he had decided that this was the least exciting job ever, a pair of Iwa nin chose to defect.


	11. More Relatives

The Hokage felt like slamming his head against his desk. When he thought the paperwork had finally eased up slightly thanks to Naruto and his family, they had to go and make more as well as drag in a diplomatic incident. Blood tests that had been done by the T&I department had confirmed that the people who had shown up at Konoha's gates were indeed Uzumaki as the ones who were Uzumaki by blood all shared genetic markers that were unique to that clan.

While there would be far less paperwork if he threw the defectors and their relatives out of the village, he would never hear the end of it from Naruto, and it wouldn't be worth that particular headache. It was a pity that he couldn't make the people who generated the paperwork do it themselves as there was too much stuff that was "For Hokage's Eyes Only." which usually translated to Danzo having had a peek at it before he saw it, and the secretary reading it for his or her own personal amusement.

"While I will allow you to live in Konoha, you will of course be on probation for a number of years, and your children won't be eligible to attend the Ninja Academy." he said to the men who knelt before him with their relatives arrayed behind. "Their children will however as full natural born Konoha Citizens."

"Thank you." the eldest member of the group said.

"You're welcome." he replied as he got out a scroll and started to write. "Take this letter of introduction to the Uzumaki Clan Compound. I have no doubt that Naruto will be glad to see you."

After the scroll and directions had been handed over, the Uzumaki got up and left. If only it could be so easy on his end.

"Bring me the necessary forms." he sighed to his secretary who was nosing through a stack of reports.

&!&!&!&

Danzo snickered as he watched a secretary enter the Hokage's office with a massive stack of papers. It seemed that the Uzumaki curse had struck again. Considering how long it had been since there had been more than one Uzumaki in Konoha, it was understandable that his old friend would have forgotten. Papers relating to the Uzumaki siblings warranted an entire filing cabinet for each of them. Uzumaki Mito had her own filing cabinet as well, though that had taken much longer to accumulate.

He had done research on the Uzumakis that had made their way here from Iwa and determined them to be of little to no concern. The patriarch of that family had settled down to run an inn. His son was a rather average shinobi from the region, hadn't lost nearly as many people during the war as most, and had managed to come through with his entire family intact. His daughter had married an innkeeper and they had run the family inn while her father retired. Only two of the grandchildren had attended the Academy, one Uzumaki Kinmaru who was now deceased and the youngest granddaughter who had not graduated before the family had defected.

All in all, little to no trouble to Konoha, especially considering the fact that Kinmaru had been killed by his own village, leaving the family with a grudge against their former home that was much larger than any they may hold against Konoha, especially considering the fact that the Patriarch of the family had grown up considering Konoha to be an ally.

&!&!&!&

Uzumaki Masao winced when he saw the "Uzumaki Clan compound". The place was something of a dump. Not only that, it was mostly pink, though it looked as if someone had started painting it orange recently. If he hadn't seen the barred metal security door with the Uzumaki spiral on it, he would have thought that he'd gotten lost and ended up at a run-down apartment building. Swallowing his reservations, he walked up to the security door and knocked loudly.

"Whaddya want?" the gate guard that vaguely resembled a cousin of his said when he finally answered the door after about a minute and a half of knocking.

"The Hokage said that I was supposed to give this to the head of the Uzumaki clan." Masao replied.

The man took the scroll, examined it closely, opened it as if he were checking it for traps, and read it.

"Naruto, Get down here! A bunch of relatives just crawled out of the woodwork!" the man yelled up the stairs.

"You're the head of the Uzumaki clan?" Masao asked, hoping and praying that the answer would be no, considering how rude he was.

"Nah." the man whom he was relieved to discover was apparently just a gate guard who had inherited his manners from one of the more uncouth lines in the clan replied. "Thanks to a whole bunch of legal crap, Naruto is."

It was at that point that a young blond boy who couldn't have been much older than ten or eleven walked down the stairs. When he reached the bottom, he looked up at them and studied them curiously for a while as if he were searching for something. Eventually a wide grin stretched across the boy's face as his eyes lit up.

"Hi! My name's Uzumaki Naruto!" the boy introduced himself enthusiastically.

He could hear his son groan behind him. He knew exactly how the man felt. The head of their clan was a recent Academy Graduate who was about the same age as his grandchildren, and not only that, but the boy looked like a cross between an Uzumaki and the Yellow Flash.

"I just realized something." the gate guard said. "You're from Iwa, right?"

"Yes." his son replied.

"You won't mind that Naruto's father was the Yondaime will you?" the gate guard asked. "I don't want to be cleaning up the blood of my relatives so soon after meeting them, and I don't think Naruto would be too happy if I killed you guys."

Great. He should have known that this was a bad idea the instant he'd learned that Naruto was one of Seiki's descendants. He should have buried those scrolls with his grandson, and settled in Wave.


	12. Family Discussion

"You know, that threat you made earlier when we first arrived is an empty one, right?" Uzumaki Masao said after he'd set his stuff down in the run-down apartment that had been allotted to him as his living space. The gate guard had been going around with his shirt off, and he had spotted a certain seal he hadn't entirely been sure had been there after the man had made his threat.

"Haku." the gate guard called.

"Yes Zabuza-sama?" a rather feminine looking boy responded after appearing seemingly out of nowhere.

"I know that you don't like violence, but if they even so much as look at Naruto the wrong way..." the gate guard replied.

"Understood." the boy named Haku said before vanishing once more.

Masao and his family gathered for dinner in his son's apartment later that evening. Rather than all of them being crowded in the same run-down apartment, he'd been given his own apartment, his son and his wife had been given their own apartment, his daughter and their husband had been given their own apartment, and each of his daughter's children had been given apartments of their own. He had thought that giving each of his grandkids their own apartment had been rather strange, until the new clan head pointed out that it would still be their apartment when they grew up, got married, and started having kids of their own. He'd just been giving them the apartments now to get that out of the way. He hadn't seen any problem with them having their own apartments, because he'd been living on his own in one of the upstairs apartments since he was six.

"What do we do now?" his son Koyo asked once the meal's over.

"We stay." he replied. "What's done is done. If we leave now, we will have both Iwa and Konoha after us. There is also no guarantee that the situation we will find ourselves in if we do somehow manage to resettle elsewhere will be as good as the one we are currently in. We currently have a roof over each of our heads, a relative that more than likely won't let us starve, and the opportunity to find jobs. There is no guarantee that we will find such conditions again for a good long time."

"But the new head of our clan is..." His daughter started.

"The son of Uzumaki Kushina, and most likely her successor." he cut across whatever the girl was going to say. "He will of course be needing advice in the future considering his age, and will not be inclined to take it from us instead of his gate guard if we behave hostilely."

"About that "Gate guard" of his..." his son started.

"What?" he asked.

"I could be mistaken, but I'm almost willing to swear under oath that that man is Momochi Zabuza." Koyo replied.

"Momochi Zabuza?" he asked. Whoever he was, he was after his time, and therefore he wasn't familiar with the name.

"Missing Nin from Kiri nicknamed the Demon of the Mist." his son replied. "He was one of the Seven Swordsmen."

"You're right. If you don't remember, back in Wave, Naruto's name was mentioned most often in conjunction with Zabuza's. The man is Naruto's first cousin. It's more than likely that the man defected just as we did." he said.

"Great. So we're stuck here with the spawn of the Yellow Flash, and a Missing Nin from Kiri." his daughter's husband commented. He could understand why the man was upset, since he had lost a good number of relatives and his family's inn during the last war. "Why do you even allow the boy to be the Head of the Clan in the first place? Either one of you three could easily take the position from the boy and..."

"Get ourselves and your children killed, either by Konoha or by Iwa. If you remember correctly, it had been our former home that killed Koyo's son." he replied, talking some sense into the man despite the fact that he himself had thoughts along similar lines before. "The boy - who is the only natural born Konoha citizen amongst us - is the Clan Head for legal reasons as Zabuza stated before. Konoha and the Senju who founded it were the Uzumaki Clan's closest allies, and for as long as we do not "turn traitor" to the clan head and mark ourselves as renegades, they will protect us with their lives. The red spiral on every Konoha ninja's uniform that you so despise is the symbol of our clan, and the sign that the alliance still stands despite Uzushiogakure's fall."

His entire family stared at him when he'd finished his statement. It seemed that certain things had been forgotten when he had put away the Uzumaki spiral for the last time at the beginning of the Third Shinobi War. The red spiral that many had forgotten was the Uzumaki clan symbol as it had been most frequently seen on the Konoha uniform had nearly marked his son and daughter as the enemy, and had been removed from all of their clothing when they were still children. While his grandson had tried to revive the Uzumaki sealing arts, he had not worn the clan symbol even once in his entire life.

"You do realize what will happen if word gets out about who our clan head is son of." Koyo finally said after processing his statement. He didn't have to like the situation, none of them did, but they all would have to accept it and do their best to survive.

"What would you think would be the worst fear of anyone from Iwa?" he asked, already knowing the answer as a plan had formed when he'd come to the same realization his son had about their new Clan Head.

"The Yellow Flash returning from the dead." Koyo, his daughter, and his son in law replied automatically.

"So, what do you think would happen if a blond from Konoha started popping about randomly on the battlefield?" he asked.

"They'd probably shit themselves and run, but..." Koyo replied, apparently not seeing where he was going with this.

"But what?" he asked.

"But, nobody's been able to recreate the Hiraishin, and thousands have tried, even some of the best Seal Masters on the continent." his son said.

"All we've seen about the move is seals." he replied. "Seals are the Uzumaki specialty. If we can't make it, we can damn well fake it so well that nobody'll notice the difference."

"Why would you do that though?" his daughter asked.

"I'm not going to let us lose our home so soon after we got it, and that could happen if our new Clan Head dies." he replied. "He won't be dying on my watch, not if I can help it."


	13. Clones and Religion

Uzumaki Shisekieimaru made his way to the apartment of the Clan Head as his wife slept. He knew the boy was awake, as he'd seen the light on when he'd gone outside to get some air. Throughout his life, he'd lost or been forced to give up certain things. When he had come to Konoha with his wife's family, the most recent thing he'd been forced to give up had been his family name. He and his children had been put down as Uzumaki on all of the forms, and they had been registered before he could object and have them corrected.

In a way, it had given him a fresh start, as he had left his name behind with his former home, but it still upset him that he had been forced to lose even this. There was one thing that he would not give up however. He would give up his home, as he'd been forced to. He'd give up his name, since he didn't have any other choice. But, he would not give up his, his wife's and his children's religion.

He knocked on the door, and eventually the small boy who looked vaguely like his son answered. The boy who was dressed in shabby white pajamas and a cap that looked like it was eating his head stared at him for a moment before inviting him inside. The boy's apartment was just as shabby as the ones that had been given to the rest of the family, though it looked like someone had tried to cover this fact by repainting the place. The furniture appeared to either be third hand or to have been rescued from the trash.

While he hadn't been a ninja, his mother had taught him how to deal with Genjutsu, in order to keep his Shinobi customers from cheating him. His surroundings didn't change after he had "disrupted his Chakra" and discreetly pricked himself with a pin. Apparently this wasn't the sort of clan where the head lived in the lap of luxury while the others scrabbled to support him, unlike other clans he could name. Uzumaki Naruto hadn't been generous with the food allowance not because he was stingy, but because he couldn't afford to be. It was quite possible that the meager grocery money that the boy had handed out comprised of his entire savings. Masao had said that the boy wouldn't let them starve, but he had seen the frown on the man's face when the child had handed out the food money the same as everyone else.

With Clan Head as the only active ninja, and a Genin at that, it was unlikely that their situation would improve anytime soon since he had a feeling that jobs would be rather scarce for refugees from Iwa, as they would be in Iwa for refugees from Konoha. There was some small hope that Momochi, er Uzumaki Zabuza might be able to become an active Konoha ninja someday. He had a feeling that his family had been treated a bit more harshly than the Kiri nin had because they were from Iwa, and the survivors of the last war would most likely resent their presence otherwise. They'd resent their presence regardless, but it would be more difficult if his brother-in-law and his younger daughter tried to join the ranks of Konoha's Shinobi Forces, especially considering the fact that his brother-in-law had been on the other side of the battlefield a little more than a decade before.

"What do you want?" the boy who had invited him into his home asked.

"There's something I would like to discuss with you." he replied.

Instead of making him kneel or something like that since he was making a request, the boy invited him to sit at his dinner table while he pulled a kettle off the stove and grabbed two cups of instant noodles out of a cabinet that was stocked entirely with them. He set one of the cups before him before pouring water from the kettle into his own cup.

"Now what was it you wanted to talk about?" the boy finished when he was done pouring water into the cup of ramen he'd been offered.

He launched into the speech he'd spent the evening mentally preparing. When it was over, a bored looking Naruto said "I think there's a shrine or something to that god like three streets over. You can go there whenever you want to" before he turned to him and asked him if he was going to eat his ramen. It took him ten full seconds to realize that the matter had been settled and that his new Clan Head had ruled in his favor. By then, the boy had taken his silence as an apparent negative, reclaimed the cup of ramen that had just been sitting there in front of him throughout his entire speech, and devoured it.

He quickly wished his new Clan Head a good evening. He would have to ask his wife to start teaching the boy proper manners in the morning. Apparently, the child had been left on his own for far too long, and had forgotten them if they had even been taught to him in the first place.

&!&!&!&

"So you were actually inside his apartment?" Uzumaki Koyo asked his brother-in-law the next morning when they had left the "Clan Compound" in order to start looking for work. "What was it like?"

"Let's just say that the kid might know a couple good dumps to get furniture from." his brother-in-law replied.

It would seem that the communal coffers that clans tended to set up and pay into in order to help members who were out of work and couldn't support themselves - usually because of a serious injury - were empty, and that the family grocery money that the Clan Head had handed out had come from the child's personal savings which had more than likely become severely depleted if not drained entirely. It should have been obvious now that he thought about it, considering the fact that before their arrival in Konoha, there had only been two Uzumaki in residence, and one of them had time to play "Gate Guard".

Finding work had been impossible. While they had been barely tolerated when they had gone out to get groceries, the minute they stepped into a place of business and mentioned the Help Wanted sign, even that little bit of good will swiftly dried up. One thing they never ran short of was glares and cold looks. The thing they heard most frequently was "...from Iwa. They're _**his **_family". They made their way home tired, and temporarily defeated.

When they reached the Apartment building, they found their father/father-in-law and their Clan Head outside. The child was pouring orange paint into a large number of buckets, and their father was standing there watching.

"What's he doing?" Koyo asked when he reached his father.

"I have absolutely no idea." his father replied. "He said something about finishing the painting this evening because his Sensei had entered his team into the Chunin Exams."

"The job's only half done. There's no way he'd be able to finish it by himself in anything lest than a week." he replied as he watched the boy fill the buckets with his father standing on one side and his brother-in-law on the other, all three of them ready to help the minute the child asked. One good thing about their new Clan Head was that he wasn't the sort of brat that demanded others to do things he wasn't willing to do himself, or at least he hadn't been so far.

"TAJUU KAGE BUNSHIN NO JUTSU!"

Suddenly, the area was filled with what had to be at least a hundred of their Clan Head. The boy truly was the son of the Yellow Flash. As he watched the clones each grab a bucket and get to work, an idea as to how they could pull off the faking of the Hiraishin hit him. His father had mentioned something about summoning seals last night while he studied the three pronged kunai that he'd pulled off the battlefield during his early days as a Chunin.

"Dad," he said, turning to his father. "I have an idea..."


	14. Mob Mentality

The Hokage sighed and groaned when he saw the very large and very angry group of citizens standing outside the tower. He knew exactly what they were here for. He couldn't have turned Naruto's relatives away however due to certain agreements that had been made with the Uzumaki by his predecessors generations before, agreements that should have been kept decades ago. The fact that there was a mob outside was his fault however for letting rumors spread and grow rather than giving an announcement regarding Naruto's relatives when they'd first showed up. He suddenly got hit with a bit of inspiration after he'd heard about the hundredth yell of "From Iwa".

The Professor would be teaching a history lesson today. Time to turn this back on the mob...

"How many of you have studied Konoha's history?" he asked the amassed crowd.

A sea of hands hesitantly raised.

"Good." he said. "Now how many of you know what the Red spiral on the standard Shinobi uniform is and why it is there?"

Far fewer hands rose this time, and none amongst those that could roughly be considered to be in Naruto's generation which included those less than ten years older than the boy. It seemed that he would have to be reviewing the Academy Instructors and Civilian teachers again as people had apparently left out a sizable chunk of the history of Konoha's founding which included the mutual defense treaty with Uzushiogakure as well as certain other reciprocal arrangements.

"Okay, time for an easier question." he said. "How many of you know the maiden name of the Shodaime's wife?"

There were a bunch of looks of confusion at this.

"Oh, come on now. Many of you are old enough to have known Mito-sama while she was still alive. You should know this one."

"U-Uzumaki." one of the members of the crowd said hesitantly.

There were a bunch of shocked looks on the faces of the members of the mob who were under the age of twenty. He would most definitely have to review all of Konoha's teachers after the Chunin Exams were over next month. To not know something so important about the spouse of the First Hokage...

"What does that have to do with anything though?" one of the members of the crowd yelled. "That boy's relatives came from Iwa."

"Alot Actually." he replied. "I'm not blaming anyone in particular here, but...If some of you had actually honored Konoha's agreement with its closest ally who had stood by us during the First and Second wars even when they themselves were being overrun and hadn't stood outside Konoha's gates thirty years ago chasing off refugees from Uzushiogakure including a sizable number of descendants of blood relatives of the Shodaime who had married into the Uzumaki clan, they wouldn't have had to go to Iwa in the first place. Ironic really, being taken in by your enemies because the allies you swore to stand by and who swore to stand by you chased you away, especially considering the sacrifices Kushina-san's brothers made for Konoha during the war, and the sacrifices Kushina-san herself made for the village..."

He could see dirty looks being shot at the "Konoha for the Konohans" crowd that tended to always show up at or make this kind of trouble. A bunch of the older crowd were looking guilty now, and frankly it served them right. He knew exactly what they were thinking, chasing off a bunch of foreigners was well and good as far as they were concerned, but chasing away the Shodaime's relatives? That was another kettle of fish entirely. A couple of Chunin who had ostensibly shown up as crowd control were looking at the spirals on their comrades' vests with new eyes. It seemed that word of what the spiral was had gotten around. Such things shouldn't be forgotten really, especially since Uzushiogakure had been Konoha's sister village and the Senju and Uzumaki clans had been so intermarried at one point that it had sometimes been hard to tell where one ended and the other began.

The crowd began to rather guiltily disperse. Some of the retired shinobi who had apparently come more because Konoha's newest residents had come from Iwa were looking sick as they left. They had probably known and served alongside Uzumaki Sato, Uzumaki Ao and Uzumaki Kushina and were probably imagining what it would have been like for the three of them to have been forced to face and kill relatives on the battlefield because the place in which they had made their home had driven them into the arms of the enemy.

&!&!&!&

Haruno Barako had been part of the crowd more because she tended to go along with these kinds of things rather than be questioned why she hadn't participated. It mainly stemmed from her childhood where she was picked on much like her daughter had been, but not because she had a "overlarge forehead". Since then, she had done her best to keep her head down, be normal, and fit in. Holding back her sharp tongue and her right hook had been a tortuous exercise in patience.

She, like her daughter, had a rather rare genetic mutation that cropped up in a particular clan, a clan she had distanced herself from when she had grown up, a clan she denied any relation to whatsoever after a certain incident twelve years ago...

"Can you believe that? He just expects us to accept _**that boy's**_ relatives just because one of them was married to the Shodaime? I for one am going to petition my Head of Clan to call for a meeting of clans to discuss the Uzumaki Clan's removal." one of her neighbors said. "What about you Haruno-san?"

"My mother was an Uzumaki." she replied. She'd been teased all throughout her childhood because her mother had been a foreigner. Now, she wasn't going to put up with it. She was going to tell everyone to shove it like she should have done a long time ago.

From elsewhere in the crowd, she heard a yell of "Say that about my grandfather's family again, I dare you!". It seemed that she wasn't the only one to reclaim a part of their heritage that had been hidden away like a dirty secret twelve years ago.

&!&!&!&

Tazuna frowned as he listened to the Chunin from Konoha who had escorted a merchant speak after the innkeeper had asked about Naruto. The younger of the two Chunin had made a face and asked "Why do you want to hear about him?" when the innkeeper had asked. Shortly afterward, the boy had launched into a tale about an angry mob who had tried to demand that the family that had shown up a while back be evicted from Konoha earlier that week. It was then that he noticed something about the boy's shirt and vest. He could tell that he wasn't the only one.

From the darker green patch on the young Chunin's vest, it seemed that the spiral had been picked off recently.

"I see." he said. "So that's how it is."

"That's how what is old man?" the young Chunin asked.

"Kaji." he called to one of the regulars instead of replying. "Go see if the Daimyo would be willing to restore Uzushiogakure's charter. I'm going to tell the merchants to inform any Uzumaki they might encounter that going to Konoha would be pointless since the alliance has been called off, the Senju have turned their backs on them, and they're trying to kick out the Uzumaki that have already settled there."

"And to think we actually trusted you bastards to help us." one of the exceedingly elderly patrons said. "I think the other countries would be interested to see how Konoha treated its allies. We should have taken that treaty with Kirigakure when we had the chance. Odds are that Uzushiogakure would still be standing if we did."

"Being overrun by Iwa's forces my ass. You Konoha fucktards were sitting high and dry and doing fuckall while we were being invaded by the forces of both Kiri and Kumo, and we still tried to send you troops." another elderly patron spat.

He knew exactly how the old men felt. He would be sending Naruto a letter inviting him to come back, and asking him to stay permanently this time.

&!&!&!&

"Good going Ichiro," the young Chunin's partner spat as he settled in his tree that evening after the inn mysteriously filled up in the hour after their arrival though no other customers had walked in, their rooms had suffered a mysterious "mishap", and no vacancies could be found in any of the other inns in the area. "I told you doing that to your uniform would be a bad idea."

"But my mother..." he started, trying to explain.

"Should have been told to go to hell. Do you have any idea of exactly where we are?" his partner snapped, cutting him off.

"Wave?" he replied.

"A country that was liberated from a hostile occupying force by a team that included Uzumaki Naruto and Uzumaki Zabuza." his partner angrily snapped. "A country that used to be known as Whirlpool."

"Shit." he said, as understanding sank in.

"Do you realize what happened back at the inn?" his partner snapped again.

"A bunch of old guys got angry at us?" he replied.

"No, you moron. You fucking lost Konoha a bunch of customers. A whole country full of customers in fact. Not only that, but you and every last one of the other idiots who pulled the spirals off their uniforms because they don't like the- Naruto, or because our allies had decided to go the long way around when they noticed that Konoha seemed to be closed to them and took a pit stop in Iwa may have lost Konoha several potential allies. What do you think will happen when word starts spreading that Konoha has called off an "Eternal Alliance" and tried to boot the relatives of one of their founding families out of the village? People are going to start asking questions, especially considering the fact that Uzushiogakure is no longer standing while Konoha prospers, and the fact that refugees from Uzu were turned away from Konoha's gates despite the alliance when Uzu fell." his partner replied angrily.

When his partner put it like that, defacing his uniform just to get his mother to shut up about his wearing the symbol of the "Demon"'s clan was a spectacularly bad idea, especially considering the fact that his very next mission had been to a place that revered the "Demon" and the Uzumaki clan as a whole. Rather than spending the night in a comfy inn as he had been hoping to do, they were forced to "rough it". Not only that, but he had the distinct feeling that the townspeople were barely restraining themselves from arming themselves with torches and pitchforks and running them out of Wave.

"Goodnight Ichiro." his partner said. "Tomorrow, I'm going to be doing a great deal of damage control, and that will include distancing myself from you. Not that that'll be a great hardship as far as I'm concerned."


	15. Uzumaki here, Uzumaki there, Uzumaki eve

The Hokage slammed his head against his desk as the tenth report came in. Now he knew that it really had been like Danzo had repeatedly warned him. Of course he'd been stupid enough to brush off all of his old friend and rival's warnings, wanting to believe the best in the villagers as he had done Orochimaru until the man's crimes could no longer be ignored. He had been far too soft on the people of Konoha for far too long. He didn't want to crack down on them in a draconian manner the way Danzo had been recommending for years, but if that was what it took...

It was his fault it got to be this way. He hadn't had the ninja try very hard to get the people standing at the gates to stop turning away their allies because he hadn't believed that Konoha could survive if there was fighting both inside and outside the village at the time it was happening. So, to maintain the peace, he'd held his tongue and looked the other way.

He'd looked the other way far too often over the years. If he'd come down hard on Fugaku when the first rumors of the coup had been substantiated rather than try negotiating with the man, the Uchiha Clan would still be here filling out Konoha's forces, and each would be doing the work of two or three ordinary shinobi with Itachi doing the work of ten. If he'd stomped Danzo down early on, he wouldn't have to deal with the massive headache that ROOT had become during the intervening decades. ROOT was another thing he still turned a blind eye to since he'd been too gentle to allow his forces to undergo the trauma of completing some of the "messier" missions, and more underhanded dealings. If he'd not signed anything that was set before him without looking at it on the first anniversary after Biwako's death, Naruto would have had Sato, Ao, and Kushina's savings to fall back on now instead of having had them almost completely depleted over the last twelve years as they payed for his upkeep since some bastard had found a loophole that would keep Naruto from ever receiving money from the Orphan Fund, and he'd signed off on it.

Hell, if he'd just done his job rather than sitting there mourning the dead and rubber stamping everything, Naruto's situation wouldn't be nearly half as bad as it had been. If he'd actually been thinking, he would have concealed Naruto's identity as the Jinchuriki from those who didn't need to know, the way it had been with Kushina. He'd seen how Mito-sama had been treated by some people, and that had been without the Kyuubi having rampaged within Konoha's city limits.

Even though it was probably too late, he was going to finally put his foot down like he should have done a long time ago. It was time for him to become the Hokage he should have been from the start, an Iron fist in a velvet glove, just like the Shodaime and Nidaime had been.

"Bring me a list of the names of every shinobi who has pulled the spiral from their vests." he ordered his secretary.

&!&!&!&

"What's this about the Uzumaki?" Tsunade drunkenly asked the person who had been sitting next to her in the gambling den and whispering to his friend.

"Konoha's turning them away." the man said. "An armed mob tried to evict the Clan Head and his family when they settled there, believing that Konoha would keep the agreements that they had made with their clan."

"What?" she yelled. "Clan Head? Last I heard, the clan had split up and scattered to the four corners of the earth."

"The new Head, someone named Naruto was trying to get the clan back together in the village that was their closest ally, but..." the man said.

"Excuse me, but I think I'll fold now." she said almost sweetly.

"Why?" the others at the table asked.

"I need to get back to Konoha to kick some asses." she replied.

"Why?" a group of surprised people asked as she got up from the table.

"Because, my grandfather was the Shodaime, and my grandmother was an Uzumaki." she called back. "Any bastards who think they can tarnish my family's honor like that, and chase my relatives off will be getting thrown out of my family's village, even if I have to toss them and their crap over the wall myself."

&!&!&!&

Pein sighed as he looked at the tattered and worn spiral that had once graced his family home. It had been the only thing he had salvaged when he had fled after the deaths of his parents and the Konoha ninja who had killed them. His mother had been born in Uzushiogakure, and had met, fell in love with, and married his father who had been something of a wandering minstrel at the time. They had settled in Ame, and his father had gotten a steady job when his mother was expecting him, putting a permanent end to their wandering ways. Eventually, they had amassed enough money to purchase the small house in which the had happily lived for such a short time before the war came.

With the war came ninja from Konoha. Ninja that his mother had said were their allies right up until the day she had been killed by one of them. Another ninja of Kohnoha had trained him. When he started thinking he could trust the man, and that not all ninja from Konoha were bad, the man had abandoned him, Yahiko, and Konan, leaving them to fend for themselves against Hanzo.

To compound Konoha's crimes, the last three hosts for the Kyuubi had been Uzumaki. Instead of using one of their own, they'd used the Shodaime's wife, persuaded Uzushiogakure to hand over the one member of their clan with the greatest potential, and stole her son from her as she was dying. They had raised the new host of the Kyuubi to be a "Loyal citizen of Konoha", while mistreating the child the entire time. When the child tried to get the Clan back together after he had started finding relatives on his first trip outside of the village, they had tried to chase his family away.

Konoha most definitely was not the sort of place for his family to live in no matter how distant the relatives were. Madara was right about how the bastards there would turn on you in a heartbeat.

Feeling slightly guilty over what would be happening to the Clan Head should he accept his offer, Pein started writing a letter inviting the Uzumaki to move to Amegakure. Naruto would by dying anyway, but there was a chance that their clan would survive if they did move. Konoha had sanctioned the extermination of one of its founding clans after all, so what was one that only merely had blood ties to the other?

After he had finished his letter, he had signed it using a name he hadn't used in a long time, Nagato.

&!&!&!&

Haruno Kosuke sighed as his wife spoke to the Uzumaki clan head. The boy had been sitting there and staring at them with the stupidest expression he'd ever seen. He'd agreed to place the Haruno clan under the Uzumaki Clan's protection in order to shut his wife up. It wasn't as if relations between the neighbors could get any worse since the revelation that his wife was "an Uzumaki", and the fallout that came with it thanks to a vicious bitch from up the street.

Konoha wasn't really as divided over the issue as it seemed. There were the Uzumaki supporters, and those who were against the Uzumaki mainly because the majority of the ones currently residing in Konoha had come from Iwa, or because of the young clan head. Most of the people of Konoha however didn't really care, and just wanted to get on with their lives. Unfortunately for Konoha's reputation however, those who were against the Uzumaki were the loudest, and were being heard most often by people from other countries who were starting to ask questions about what happened to Konoha's "staunchest ally", amongst other things.

His wife had become a staunch Uzumaki supporter after it had been her mother's family that was being maligned as well rather than just the Kyuubi brat. It had been she who had demanded that the Haruno become protected by the Uzumaki after one of the neighbors' clans that was down to one family unit with a rather henpecked husband who did everything his wife had told him to had booted them out from under protection that had been in place for more than a century. His cousin whom he was going to deny being related to if anyone ever asked had been rather apologetic when he'd booted him out from under his protection, but he'd still booted him out nonetheless.

Fortunately, the Uzumaki boy didn't make any unreasonable demands. All of the demands he did make could be met with little to no hardship on the part of their clan, unlike the demands being made by the Uchiha boy - who was becoming increasingly erratic lately and had run off for a month long "training trip" - on those under his protection. Another bonus was that the boy didn't seem half as interested in his daughter after it was revealed that they were "related".

All in all, the situation wasn't half as bad as it could be, and there was hope for the future. Either the Kyuubi brat would learn to become a proper Head of a ninja clan in the future, or the his successor would be better. It was difficult to deal with now however...


	16. The Return of Tsunade

Inuzuka Yon and Aburame Kochu had once again pulled gate duty, this time however it wasn't because they were recovering from injuries. Their abilities were needed as an additional security measure this time, and they were assigned to a team that was to attend to the gate today rather than the usual pair. Today was far busier than the last time they'd pulled gate duty, since today was the third phase of the Chunin Exams.

The dignitaries who were streaming in were to be expected, and Yon's partner Han gave each of them no more than a cursory sniff. A rather militant looking Senju Tsunade leading a rather defiant looking group that mainly consisted of redheads wasn't, and rather than sniffing the group that had just arrived at the gates, Han had rather sensibly hid himself under the table.

"W-Welcome to K-Konoha. M-May I ask what the p-purpose of your v-visit is?" Yon stammered out as he quailed under the combined killing intent of the Shodai Hokage's granddaughter and the bunch of people who looked like they were related both to her and to each-other.

"We're here to see the Hokage!" Tsunade said as she slammed her papers down on the table to be stamped.

Yon released a breath he didn't realize he was holding when Tsunade and her companions were finally out of sight, being escorted to the Tower by one of the other guards.

That had been beyond scary. He had never been that frightened before, not even on his first combat mission.

&!&!&!&!&

Orochimaru fidgeted nervously as Tsunade of all people, Tsunade who had sworn never to return to Konoha, took the seat which his sensei's guards had hastily set next to the old man he planned on personally killing later.

Why was she here? Had she learned of his plans and come to stop him? She had been able to beat him before, could she still do so now?

"I must admit, I'm quite surprised by your return Tsunade." his sensei said to his former teammate. "The last time we spoke to each-other, you swore that you wouldn't be coming back. May I ask why you returned?"

"You know why I returned." Tsunade said, sounding irritated as she fanned herself with the program for the day's events which one of the guards had thoughtfully provided her with.

"I do?" his former sensei asked, sounding surprised.

"You honestly expected me to let the bastards around here kick my grandmother's relatives out without doing anything about it?" Tsunade said, as she forcefully crushed the program she'd been fanning herself in her fist. The small book which had been one of the hardbound souvenir copies which had been made for some of the more important nobles crumpled as if it had been a mere sheet of paper.

His former sensei winced at both Tsunade's statement, and her show of strength.

"They haven't been kicked out." his former sensei said. "In fact, they have a compound here now."

"You mean that run down apartment building that was covered in eggs and graffiti which we passed by on the way to the tower?" Tsunade asked.

"We?" his former sensei asked as he gestured for one of his guards, before whispering something in the man's ear.

"I brought a few relatives home with me." Tsunade replied as the guard departed.

"How many is a few?" his former sensei asked, suddenly sounding a bit nervous.

"A couple dozen." Tsunade replied with that little smile that meant that someone was going to be in a lot of pain very soon.

He was glad that smile wasn't directed at him. Very glad. No good memories were associated with the few times he'd seen that smile pointed in his direction.

"Note to self:" he muttered under his breath. "Don't do something to upset the Uzumaki."

&!&!&!&

Down in the civilian portion of the viewing stands, a large number of people were making note of the arrival of a sizable contingent of redheads who were wearing the symbol of a clan that most people had thought to be virtually extinct up until a couple months earlier.

There was a general groan of "Oh crap, there's more of them." as the group made their way to a number of hastily vacated seats next to the already seated group of Uzumaki. This groan came from all, not just those who had been Anti-Uzumaki, but not all for the same reasons. The Pro-Uzumaki group took this attitude, because there were more arrivals from outside the village that would cause the Anti-Uzumaki group to be even more fiercely up in arms. The Anti-Uzumaki group took this attitude because, hey, there were more Uzumaki. Those who were neutral and generally couldn't care less about the Uzumaki took this attitude, because with more Uzumaki came more screaming fits and whatnot to disturb their lives.

The Uzumaki response to this was a bunch of glares, killing intent, some vulgar salutes in both civilian and ninja handsigns, and a few shouts from the more exuberant members of the clan.

"So, which one of you guys is the Clan Head?" one of the new arrivals asked as soon as the group was seated.

"None of us." Uzumaki Zabuza replied.

"The Clan Head's down there, and he's up first." Uzumaki Masao said, as he pointed down to the arena where the competitors were lined up.

"The kid with the gourd on his back?" asked one of the new guys who sounded somewhat confused, probably because the kid with the gourd had the symbol for Suna's ninja forces on his person.

"Nope. The kid in the orange and blue track suit." Uzumaki Koyo replied.

"But he's..." one of the newcomer's started.

"Blond?" Koyo replied. "You know what they say, blonds have more fun."

"Only if they get their hands on a redhead dear." Koyo's wife said.

&!&!&!&

Outside the walls of Konoha, one of the members of Suna's forces had spent a good long while trying to come to a decision. In the end, it came down to "Family First". Now that his moral quandary was over, he retied the hitai-ate that he'd spent the last hour looking at.

If he ran into any of his relatives, he would give his life to protect them if need be. After the war was over, he would offer any of his clan that survived a home back in Suna. Anyone else from Konoha however...

Considering how Konoha had treated his family, they deserved to be invaded.


	17. The Invasion

If someone had told Gaara that morning that there would be a drunk leaning on him in order to stay upright and that he wouldn't kill the man for having had the gumption to do so, he would have killed them in hopes that their insanity didn't spread and make him even crazier than he already was. That was what he was doing at that moment however. He was sitting at a campfire in the woods outside of Konoha where the Uzumaki were holding some sort of wake for those who had died during that day's invasion.

This had mainly involved a great deal of drinking to those who had been lost, and sharing stories of loved ones that were no-longer with them, several of whom had died that day.

"Don' worry about the fac that yer not a Uzumaki. Ya loo' enough li' un that no-one'll notish." the drunk slurred as he settled even more of his weight on him.

He hadn't been too aware of what was going on during the Invasion due to the fact that the demon which had been sealed within him had been taking over his mind. When he had become aware of what was going on, everything had been just about over, and he'd had a life-changing epiphany thanks to the Head of the Uzumaki Clan who had somehow managed to defeat both him and the demon he'd called "Mother" in battle.

He, Baki-sensei, and his siblings had been hiding, hoping to make a break for it when the coast was clear and run back to Suna as fast as possible, but the Uzumaki wake had found him while he'd been relieving himself and somehow managed to suck him in. He felt vaguely guilty about being here, as if he were spying on something private. And, to make matters worse, he had been part of the cause of the wake.

While the incidents that had led up to the invasion had started rolling long ago, everything culminated in what had started that morning, and ended with the demise of Orochimaru who had been impersonating his father.

For Orochimaru to be able to impersonate his father, his father had to be dead, and he wasn't sure how he felt about that.

When the bottle came back around, he drank a toast to the father he'd both loved and hated. The alcohol from his first drink burned going down, hurt his stomach, and made him feel ill, much as his relationship with his father had.

&!&!&!&!&

Despite Tsunade's unexpected arrival, Orochimaru decided to go through with his plans. He was confident that the element of surprise would allow his team to get the barrier up before Tsunade could come to the rescue of their former sensei. A further loss of someone important to her would further weaken her, making her a negligible opponent after their sensei was dead.

After a rather interesting fight between the head of the Uzumaki and Hyuuga Neji in which the Uzumaki showed that he was trying and so far failing to reconstruct his father's signature technique, and a rather dull fight between the Nara heir and the Yondaime Kazekage's eldest, the fight that was the signal to start the invasion took place. When it was time, he threw the smoke canister that was the signal for Suna's forces to invade and brought his former teacher up to the roof of the arena where his Sound Four promptly put up a barrier that would cause anyone who tried to breach it to suffer a very painful death.

One could spend days, weeks, months, or even years deconstructing an invasion that had taken less than an hour from start to finish. There had been a number of important skirmishes which had changed the future of a number of families, Konoha as a whole, and even the Elemental Nations to a degree.

Kidnapping the Hokage and putting up a barrier which trapped the Sandaime Hokage, Orochimaru, and as Orochimaru was soon to discover, Tsunade inside had taken mere seconds. While that was going on, one Uchiha Sasuke set off pursuing a fleeing Gaara and his siblings, and Hyuuga Hinata was kidnapped from her grandfather's side by some opportunistic Kumo ninja.

Seconds later, a giant serpent made a hole in one of the village walls through which Suna's troops poured in while a number of ninja fought the enemy who had disguised themselves as ANBU in the arena, while Neji, his teammate TenTen, and Kiba went after Hinata's kidnappers and Kakashi sent Uzumaki Naruto and a few others after Sasuke.

As force met force, the entire Uzumaki contingent including those who just arrived leapt in to join the fray on the side of Konoha, with one witty member yelling "We're here to kick ass and take names, and we're overstocked on names!" as he engaged a force of seven Suna nin on his own.

As all of this was going on, the Hokage was fighting Orochimaru on the roof of the arena, with Tsunade by his side.

&!&!&!&

Tsunade ignored the pain in her gut, and the blood that poured from her wound, knowing that she would die alongside her sensei soon. She had gone into this fight, not wanting to watch someone else who was important to her die, but nothing could stop that now. The only solace she had was that she would join Dan and Nawaki soon, since her sensei would be going to a place where she could not follow. She had one last gift she could give her sensei though, one last thing to help him defeat her wayward teammate who was pulling away, sapping the last of her sensei's strength.

She called forth her Chakra, and poured as much as she could into her old sensei, hoping that it would be enough to allow him to finish his final task.

It had been a long and difficult fight, and it could be argued that nobody had won. Orochimaru had brought her grandfather and her great-uncle back from the dead, and forced them to fight her and her sensei. The fight had been difficult, especially since the bodies her noble ancestors had been given had the ability to regenerate. and she couldn't summon her larger slugs since the roof wasn't structurally sound enough to support its weight, and a fall through said roof could at the very least add more hazards that could make the fight that much more difficult.

Eventually, her sensei had come to realize that the only way to end this was to use the Shiki Fuujin to bring his former senseis back to where they belonged before they were forced to destroy what was left of Konoha after the last of their strength was drained and the fight ended. She had tried to argue against this option, but even she could see the futility of the situation, and that this was the only way to get rid of Orochimaru for good, considering what he had done.

As her sensei prepared the seal, she wept for her sensei, and her grandfather, and her great-uncle, and the kind boy she'd once loved who had grown to become the twisted monster before her.

Soon, after a couple of words of farewell, her grandfather and great-uncle were gone. When it came to be Orochimaru's turn, Orochimaru sent Kusanagi at their sensei's back knowing that the injured King Enma wouldn't be able to get there in time. She had gotten there in time to prevent her sensei from being skewered, and Enma managed to grab the sword before it could go through both her and her sensei who was now focused on pulling Orochimaru's soul out of his body.

After what seemed like forever, three bodies finally fell. Two dead, and one unconscious and nearly so. Seeing that their master had been defeated, the Sound Four dropped their barrier and fled, calling for a general retreat as they did so. Their leader was gone, and Konoha which had the home ground advantage had clearly won.

&!&!&!&!&

"This is all your fault." one of the ninja who was sitting on the battlefield that had been his home prior to the invasion which they had just driven off said to one of the ninja who had pulled the Uzushiogakure spiral off of his vest before the Hokage had cracked down on those who were doing so as he slugged the man.

"How was this my fault?" the guy asked as he rubbed his jaw where his comrade had punched him.

"Because Suna, which used to be our ally, just decided to get the first punch in before we went and left them in the lurch at the most inopportune moment." the first ninja said.

"Do you want to know why they did this...?" the first ninja continued.

"Why?" the second ninja asked, dreading the answer.

"Because of you and the rest of that whole "Anti-Uzumaki" lot put the fucking idea that Konoha leaves their allies to rot in their fucking heads you goddamn moron!" the first ninja yelled before he proceeded to pummel the second ninja.

None of the other ninja in the area went to aid their comrade who was being wailed on. They too blamed him and the others who had pulled the symbol of an eternal alliance off their vests for Suna's part in the invasion. Instead, they turned a blind eye to what was going on and started picking up the dead, enemy and ally alike.


	18. At the Hospital

The day after the invasion by the forces of Sand and Sound, the hospital which survived all of the chaos and destruction relatively unscathed seemed to be the place to be, especially if your name was Uzumaki. It wasn't only the injured who were gathered at the hospital whose halls overflowed with the injured, as there was a sizable crowd standing outside of the building holding a vigil. Who this vigil was for was the woman who had just been elected Godaime Hokage by the Council and the Fire Daimyo.

Those who knew Tsunade knew that if, no when Tsunade woke up, she would be very pissed when she discovered what her former sensei's teammates had done. She'd just come back to Konoha to issue an ultimatum to the villagers and make sure that a bunch of relatives who decided that Konoha was the place to be because people didn't want them there got settled. Staying, much less becoming Hokage had not been on her list of things to do.

Shortly after the invasion, Tsunade had been brought in, badly wounded, with one of the worst cases of Chakra depletion that the medics had ever seen, and barely clinging to life. It was touch and go, and it was uncertain whether or not the Sannin would make it through the night.

Miraculously, she made it through the surgery which closed the massive wound which had been caused by Orochimaru's sward, and had survived until dawn. As she lay in the Intensive Care Unit, people filtered towards the hospital where they offered their prayers and well-wishes for the woman who had stood by the Sandaime's side in battle, helping him defeat Orochimaru who had summoned the first and second Hokages for nefarious purposes.

By midday, all business in the village including reconstruction had halted, as most of the village's population was standing outside of the hospital waiting to receive word on any changes in the condition of the Shodai Hokage's granddaughter.

&!&!&!&!&

Inside a different ward of the hospital, one of the patients longed to be elsewhere...

Sasuke sighed as he sorted through the gift basket that the Inuzukas who were under his care had left him when they'd blown in for a visit, dragging several of their dogs along with them. After the invasion, he'd been kept in the hospital overnight for observation due to the fact that he'd nearly drained his Chakra reserves in the fight with Gaara, and the fact that after his Chakra reserves had been drained, the seal that that bastard Orochimaru had given him during the second stage of the exams had flared up very painfully before vanishing.

If he hadn't known about Naruto being the container for the Kyuubi, he probably would have been a great deal more jealous over the fact that Naruto had beaten Gaara when he had failed. It was only natural that Naruto had done so, considering the fact that Gaara merely contained the one tailed sand monster, and Naruto contained something that was either nine times, or exponentially stronger than the creature Gaara contained. If he wanted someone to measure his skills against in order to see how close he was to defeating Itachi, he needed to look a bit closer to Earth and compare himself to Kakashi, or one of the Sannin like Tsunade. As it was, he still had a long way to go.

The only reason Gaara hadn't been completely curb stomped yesterday was that before Kakashi came along, and the arrival of all of those Uzumaki, Naruto hadn't received any proper training. It wasn't that Naruto's academy training had been sabotaged, it was more that nobody had been willing to help him outside of class and had done the bare minimum for him in class. That, and the Uzumaki fighting style was something that apparently could only be understood and corrected by another Uzumaki.

As he bit into one of the tomato stuffed onigiri that the Inuzukas had rather thoughtfully included in the basket, he started thinking about what he would be doing when he got out of the hospital. Of course, the first item on his list was to check and make sure that the station hadn't been too badly damaged during the invasion. The second item was to make sure that law and order was upheld in these uncertain times when they were essentially without a Hokage. After that...

He groaned as he realized exactly how much work he had ahead of him before he had any spare time in which to train to defeat Itachi. How he would be able to get strong enough when he had to deal with all of the responsibilities that the Inuzukas kept reminding him of, he didn't know.

He spat out the last bite of his onigiri and pulled something out of his mouth, making a face as he examined it.

That was the problem with Inuzuka home cooking. Dog hair got everywhere.

&!&!&!&

In a room down the hall from Sasuke, Naruto lay unconscious. This had not been a result of the boy's battle with Gaara. Naruto had rather quickly gotten over the Chakra Exhaustion and healed all of his wounds like usual, and was his normal hyperactive self after a three hour nap. What had happened was that the boy had attended the wake the Uzumaki were holding, and after an entire night of drinking, he had gotten just drunk enough to forget exactly why he didn't eat the mushrooms that he remembered being rather tasty when he'd gone out into the woods to gather breakfast. There were few poisons that could knock out a Jinchurriki, and a certain species of mushroom that grew in the forests around Konoha were one of them. A fifth cousin twice removed ended up finding the boy, panicking, and dragging him to the hospital where he'd had his stomach pumped and had been put into a room until he woke up just like the last time that had happened when he was six.

"And how's my favorite student?" Jiraiya boomed as he entered Naruto's hospital room bearing gifts that would have been more appropriate for Hatake Kakashi rather than a twelve year-old boy.

"Out!" Naruto's elder cousin whom he thought was named Masao or something like that growled from Naruto's bedside. "We told you to get lost after you chucked him off that cliff."

"But I was..." he began. The other Uzumaki hadn't cared for him after Naruto had managed to get himself hospitalized summoning Gamabunta, and had made it clear in every way they could.

"Don't care, now out!" the old man yelled.

"Fine. I'm leaving." he said as he set the gifts he'd brought down on Naruto's bedside table. He'd have plenty of time to talk to Naruto when he took the boy on the training trip he'd been planning ever since the brat was still inside his mother. If the other Uzumaki didn't catch him and kill him when he smuggled the boy out of the village that was.

&!&!&!&!&

Down in the hospital morgue, a man stood staring at a body. While some might find this worrisome considering the number of perversions that ran rampant throughout the Elemental Nations, the man wasn't staring at the body which had just been prepared for burial in that manner. In fact, if the man had been any less heartless, he would have been kneeling near the body and crying his eyes out. After all, the man who was staring at the body had been friends with the deceased to one degree or another for over sixty years. Sure, there'd been times when he'd hated the man and all he stood for, but in the end, he always found himself remembering the boy he'd chased after hoping one day to be as good as or better than him, the boy he'd loved like a brother.

That brother, that rival, that comrade in arms who had frustrated him to no end was gone now, and all that was left was the lifeless husk on the table before him awaiting placement in a coffin.

If a tear slid down the living man's face as he turned away from his dead friend, he would deny it to his last breath.

There was no more time for him to waste on the dead. He had a village to rebuild, and possibly run.


	19. Mail Delivery

Itachi frowned as he made his way through the streets of Konoha with Kisame by his side. Rather than seeing if it would be possible to capture the Kyuubi Jinchuriki as was originally the plan, he was tasked with delivering a letter which had been written by the Akatsuki's nominal leader to the boy. It was less than a week after the village had been invaded, yet it had been almost pathetically easy to slip into the village at dawn and wander about unnoticed. The probable reason for this was the odd feeling in the air. While people went about their business slightly more absentmindedly than normal, there was an almost palpable tension that seemed to be torn between dread and anticipation.

Ghosting through the streets, he and Kisame headed towards the apartment building which was the last place he remembered the boy living in. If the boy no longer lived there, he could hopefully get directions from someone who knew where he went, seeing as Naruto's current whereabouts tended to be a common topic of discussion, or at least they had been. When he was less than a block away from the building in which Naruto had lived when he was last in the village, he could've sworn that he saw a Takahashi in a very familiar uniform race by in the direction of said building.

"Didn't they get disbanded after you offed your clan?" Kisame asked, nodding in the direction of the Takahashi woman in uniform.

"Ye-es." he said slowly, trying to figure out why the KMPF could've been reinstated, who was in charge of it now, and why the traditional shuriken with uchiwa in the center was still the symbol rather than the clan symbol of whoever was running the force now.

When they came into view of the apartment building that was now painted orange with a large Uzumaki spiral on display near the roof at the front of the building, there was a yell of "You're going to clean that up asshole!"

Turning towards the source of the commotion, he saw a red-haired man who looked to be about fifty grabbing some teenaged civilian punk by the back of his neck and shoving him towards the entrance of the building where Momochi Zabuza was standing watching the scene with amusement. Scrawled onto the side of the building was the sign of one of Konoha's street gangs. From the looks of things, the kid was either trying to piss off the Seventh Street Rebels, or Tobirama Street's Black Cats had significantly expanded their territory while he'd been gone. Either way, the mark would be gone soon, whether or not it was cleaned up by the gang member's tongue as the Uzumaki was threatening to make the boy do.

"Hey Kisame." Zabuza called out upon spotting the both of them. "Come to join the clan? I know of a woman who's looking for a husband."

Kisame's profanity laced reply made it clear as to what he thought of joining the Uzumaki, and what Zabuza could do with his clan. This was most-likely more because there was a bit of bad blood between Kisame and Zabuza, than any animosity that Kisame felt for the Uzumaki as a whole seeing as he had likely encountered few if any Uzumaki over his lifetime, not counting Zabuza apparently.

"We're here to deliver a letter to Naruto." he said, hoping to short circuit the impending fight before either Kisame or Zabuza could build up steam since they really didn't need the sort of attention that such a fight would cause.

Before Zabuza could reply, the Takahashi who had run past him and Kisame minutes earlier went flying out of a closed window that became little more than shards of glass and bits of frame upon her departure. The woman's fall and landing were almost textbook perfect, aside from the slight stumble at the end which could've proved fatal had her opponent either chosen to follow her out said window or had a comrade on the ground.

"And, stay out!" a man yelled from the broken third-story window as the woman landed on the street.

Apparently, whoever had been training the new police force was an idiot. Police never let themselves be thrown out of windows, and knew to do everything in their power to avoid seeming weak to the village populace to whom they had to be seen as so far above in skill it wasn't funny in order to maintain law and order, even if they had to cheat. Fortunately, his father had taught him a thing or two before he had been inducted into ANBU, and he'd picked some things up on his own even before then when he used to follow one of his older cousins around, and he could pass on at least one bit of advice to the woman who'd taken up the mantle of KMPF officer.

"Use your Tonfa." he calmly called over to the woman who was eying the window she'd been thrown out of balefully.

"My what?" the woman said.

"Did your superiors get your uniforms from the same people who made the old ones?" he asked, wondering if someone had forgotten the standard-issue police weapons when they were rebuilding the force. The people who outfitted the old KMPF knew to include a few extra surprises with the uniform.

"I think so." the woman replied.

"Then, there should be a pair of Tonfa sealed into the sleeve patches." he called back.

"Thanks!" the woman exclaimed as she found that there were indeed a pair of Tonfa sealed into the sleeve patches. "How did you know these would be here?"

He calmly refrained from replying, suppressing memories from his childhood back before things went bad and then got worse. Instead, he pointedly looked up at the broken window and said "Go for the knees first. If you absolutely must go for the head, don't go for the face. It'll leave marks."

"Right!" the woman said before determinedly running towards and then up the side of the building.

Kisame gave him an odd sidelong look.

"My father was the Chief of Police. It'd be strange if I didn't learn anything about how the department really worked." he replied.

"That's the most I've heard you say in months." Kisame said.

"It was for a good cause." he replied.

Zabuza waved to get their attention. "I'll bring you up to see Naruto. He's still a little sick at the moment, so if you bother him too much or if you try anything..." the Swordsman said, finishing off his statement with a threatening gesture.

"How could a Jinchuriki get sick?!" Kisame exclaimed in surprise, being well aware of the fact that the Biju generally protected their Jinchuriki from illness and most poisons as well as healed their injuries.

"He probably ate those poisoned mushrooms again." he said, remembering the last time that had happened, and how he'd been forced to clean barf off of his brand-new ANBU uniform because someone had decided to put the newbie on Naruto duty.

After being led through several hallways in which the sounds of combat from upstairs, then across the hall, and then finally downstairs echoed, they stopped at an apartment he had usually seen from the outside of the building. He hadn't been put on Naruto watching duty too often because he was a Uchiha, but he'd sat outside the boy's apartment for an entire night a couple of times before. Even back when the boy was seven, the preparation and planning Naruto had put into his more major pranks had put even some S-Ranked mission preparation to shame.

All too soon, he and Kisame were ushered inside the apartment which pretty much looked the same as the last time he saw it, aside from the addition of a desk and a new coat of paint. Seated at the apartment's table on which a cup of instant ramen was sitting wearing a set of ratty white pyjamas was one Uzumaki Naruto who frankly looked like crap.

"Whadda you want?" Naruto grumbled, apparently having just recently woken up.

Considering the fact that it was still relatively early in the morning, though a bit late for most shinobi unless they were on an evening or night shift, this was probably the case. Especially since the boy was ill recently.

"We have come to deliver a letter from the leader of Amegakure." he replied as he pulled said letter out of a hidden pocket of his cloak and set it down on the table next to the boy's cup ramen.

"Thanks." the boy said, before looking up at him rather intently and frowning.

"Is something wrong?" he asked.

"You smell like Sasuke, but you aren't." the boy replied.

Before he could find anything to say to that, there was a loud bang downstairs and a yell of "Tsunade's awake!"


End file.
